Not for Sissies

Bette Davis, paraphrasing H. L. Mencken, is much revered for alerting us to the fact that “old age is no place for sissies.” Why, it takes a certain amount of courage to even admit to old age these days, a frontier that keeps getting pushed out to later and later ages. Soon we won’t be able to admit to old age until we are in our 90’s, meaning that the majority of us will never have to worry about it.

What really separates old age from self-absorbed youth, harried young adulthood, sleepless middle age, and the desperate AARP/bucket list years (50+) is not an accumulation of years, but humor and acceptance.

If there is one thing most older people love to do, it is to laugh at themselves. Therefore, scarcely a day goes by that some tasteless but strangely funny e-mail poking fun at seniors does not arrive to cheer me. My feeling is – if you cannot laugh at what is happening to you, you are doomed to fail in your last test of life.

So…back to laughing at getting old. Ha, ha. Okay, that’s done; now let us move on to not being sissies. First, you must learn to look in the mirror without wincing. Even when you are alone. Affirmations are fine if that’s your thing. Personally I prefer steaming up the mirror first. Men can skip this step. It is my experience that no matter what we see across the table every day, they look in the mirror and think they they are fine.

Next, you must take a hard look at your naked body in the mirror. Use a hand mirror to see your rear view. This step is not for the faint of heart. Possibly men should skip this step, too, in case it has a seriously negative effect on their self-image, so necessary to – ah – performance. Women must rally despite the clear wreckage they see in order to move on to Step 3, which is a review of the contents of their closet.

Clearly the measurements of the older female shape have arbitrarily switched around. The waist and the hips have become good friends with very little distance between them. The bustline, once a proud beacon of the female form, may have slipped down to greet the waist and the hips. Hence, a ruthless deconstruction of the older woman’s closet is in order. If you are harboring clothes that looked good even five years ago, you will probably find that, while they may still fit – i.e., all zippers and buttons may be closed without immediate disaster – they no longer look right and appear to be emphasizing your worst figure flaws. Let me give it to you straight: THOSE CLOTHES WILL NEVER LOOK GOOD ON YOU AGAIN.

There, there, no sense weeping into your old favorites – buck up and see what you have left when you have finished trying on everything. Again, men will probably have a different experience. If the waistline of their pants is too tight, they will simply move it below what passes for a waistline (but looks suspiciously like a pregnancy) and rustle the pants around until they button, securing the whole business with a belt. By the way, those men who choose to wear their shirts outside their pants may think we don’t know what’s going on under there, but we do.

Now that the contents of your closet have been packed into bags for Good Will or younger, shaplier friends and family, it is time to take what is left and make it “good enough.” Even though you now have no waist, the fashion magazines tell us we are to CREATE a waist by running a narrow belt around the area where our waist used to be or drape one loosely over our hips OR (my personal favorite) move the waist area up under the bustline, also known as the empire waist. Of course clothes designed with your new empire in mind will be necessary and may I suggest the maternity department?

If nipped waist clothing has become a thing of the past for your new mature shape, you might want to consider the boxy look. By wearing loose tops and hip length jackets and sweaters, all your renegade measurements will be secured into a neat package that no one, not even you, will want to open.

If you are nodding and smiling now, that’s good: you are no sissy. But it is not all about how we look. It is about, if not totally keeping up with life, at least keeping a hand in. Do you read the daily paper in print or on line? Some older people tell me the news is too depressing. “What can you do?” they ask phlegmatically. Well, I want to respond, maybe nothing, but would it hurt to still feel something? Maybe your personal world is narrowing and your life winding down, but hey, your children and grandchildren are still in the middle of what’s out there. They say hearing is the first to go, but I fear it is passion – not of the bedroom variety – but of caring enough to at least feel a bit of rage or hope or joy.

Sometimes as we get older and decline a bit physically, there might be a tendency to kind of just stop giving back. I hear some older folks say “It’s my turn now,” and they seem to mean it is their turn to rest and not do very much. Guess what? There is almost always something you can do to contribute to your world. Even if you are a shut-in, you can call others on a telephone chain to check in and provide some company to another. If you can still drive, you can take a neighbor to the library or at least bring him books. My sister will be 82 and is quite frail with a walker, but she still manages to make her son’s favorite cookies now and then and knit gloves and mittens for children without. If you have an illness but still use the computer, you can join a chat group about your disease and share your experiences and offer encouragement. We might not be able to do what we did before, but surely most of us can do something.

It is a funny thing, but the people I know who are suffering the most and might seem to have the least to give are the people who do. I suspect they smile when they look in the mirror no matter what they see there because they are satisfied with who they are. Old age is not for sissies. It is for them, the ones who maintain a useful presence in the world despite their frailties.

If all else fails, tuck in your shirt and wear a narrow belt – somewhere.

Mary Martin

One Response

I believe the older we get, the more involved we should get. Afterall, we are wiser now than we were even 20 years ago. We have seen more, experienced more. If we don’t speak up and share our experiences, we won’t be able to share our lessons that we’ve learned as well.

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